Happiness and Hope. Pain and Pills.

From The Start- What Really Happened?- My Vaccine Injury Journey.

Here is some in depth information which was written for an email interview regarding what happened to me after I had the HPV vaccination. It’s long winded but I’m hoping it will answer many questions.
*When did you have the injections (date and what age)? What school were you at? How many did you have?*

-I was given the cervarix vaccine at the age of 12 (in year 8) at Pittville School, Cheltenham. My First injection was given November 2010, second at the end of January 2011 and the third and the end of June 2011.

*When did you first start experiencing symptoms? What were they? How did you feel?*

-I started experiencing/ noticing significant and obscure symptoms by the second injection . My immune system hit rock bottom. I had virus after virus-blood tests proved I had EBV/glandular fever in my system 2 weeks ago (which was straight after the vaccine) but I no longer had it active in my body. Everything happened back to back without a break. I had a bout of a rare virus effecting the skin; called rositis rosia, tonsillitis other infections ending in ‘itis’, and I developed a axillary abscess after months of thinking it’s a swollen lymph node (in the breast area) due to menstrual cycles which became heavy, painful and unbelievably irregular (before they stopped completely) after the second vaccine; but in fact it was an infected node which required surgery to remove it and all infected tissue across my chest- resulting in daily dressing changes, packing of the wound and treating ugly granulation tissue for 8 weeks before it became twice weekly. I had an abscess in the nether regions. I also had leaky nipples, swollen ovaries with adhesions, on going pelvic infections because of a collection of infected pussey and bloody fluid leaking into my pelvis from the ovaries. My insides felt like they were going to fall out every time I stood up. I struggled with the stairs. I was breathless. I also had an infection of my knee cartilage and build up of infected fluid behind the patella. I didn’t feel well in myself at all.

After the last vaccine in June’11 when the summer holidays were over I went back to school and began my 3rd year, year 9. I began to feel incredibly lethargic and fatigued. It started to heavily affect my school and social life. I used to fall asleep in lessons no matter how hard I concentrated. I’d go home and get straight into bed with my uniform on, and despite sleeping up to 15 hours a day the heavy weight of never ending exhaustion never went away. I had a gradual input of debilitating muscular pain, slight chest pain and dizziness, poor temperature control, and severe headaches. I was officially diagnosed with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME) in February 2012 after being informally diagnosed in October 2011. Emotionally I felt afraid and alone at first as I had no idea what my body was doing to me. I felt as if life was punishing me for something I hadn’t done. The diagnosis of ME fit my symptoms perfectly after excluding sincere conditions. Unfortunately it didn’t stop there!

*How did these progress? At what point where you admitted to hospital?*

-The symptoms continued to progress and I began experiencing daily chronic pain and chronic conditions (chronic meaning persistent and life long) in every area of my body including: musculoskeletal pain, bone pain, joint pain and joint swelling, nerve pain; hyperalgesia (sensitivity when touched), allodynia, paraesthesia-tingling, burning, stabbing, itching and numbness, trigger points, migraines lasting 7-14 days at a time causing eye pressure pain, sensitivity to light, black dots, flashes of light, blurred and double vision. I used to describe it as having frozen bones all over my body which thaw too quickly (as if you put your hands into snow and experience the sharp burning pain when they heat up too fast) along with electric barbed wire wrapped around my muscles, hot liquid running through my veins and as if your worst enemy has your voodoo doll-poking and prodding it when you least expect it- this was before I deteriorated and gained more chronic autoimmune and autonomic diseases.
Throughout the end of year 8/ year 9 I began to experience paralysis episodes much more often. I used to collapse from the waste down because my legs would loose the ability to function normally. It’s hard to explain and get your head around because my legs were completely paralysed, I couldn’t control them no matter how hard I focused, but they would be incredibly painful and hypersensitive! I experienced numbness, tingling and burning sensations- it would happen randomly without warning. It happened in, to and from lessons; more so when I over exerted myself. At first it was mild and only happened occasionally and only lasting 10 minutes to half an hour, but as the months went on it occurred more and got more aggressive. It could happen every day up to twice a day, then it lasted 72 hours, a week, then months. It was constant for 7 months, now it’s been constant for years since December 2014. Once A medic forcefully swung my floppy, heavy, lifeless limbs off the edge of an A&E trolley during one of my first full body paralysis episodes while also having an allergic reaction to penicillin which I was apparently faking. I was scared, in pain and terrified at the thought that it would never end, yet his attitude was incredibly inappropriate and he got away with it. We vaccine injured girls (or those with non-vaccine induced illnesses have to put up with so much abuse and neglect.Due to further damage to the autonomic nervous system (ANS) I began to suffer with urology issues such as bladder pain, bladder retention, loss of control tightening and contracting of the urethra and other complications. I was admitted to hospital a handful of times because of my bladder alone. I needed to be emergency catheterised to release 24-48 hours of urine, because it happened often I learnt to self catheterise-now because I have poor, nearly no bladder function, I ‘self cath’ up to 10 times a day.

Not long after my bladder I also immensely struggled with Gastrointestinal issues. Although I had been symptomatic and struggling since the beginning of year 9, stomach and bowel difficulties began to rapidly decline in September/October 2015. I began to feel full and was in agony after eating small amounts of food-It began with half a plate and ended with me only being able eat a couple of forced mouthfuls. I’d feel severely nauseated after ingesting any type of food and I’d vomit it up between 5 minutes to 6 hours after because I was either force feeding myself to stay alive and would instantly puke, or I’d be feeling unwell with my stomach churning and stabbing pain for hours due to slow gastric emptying, I’d then vomit because my stomach is incapable of digesting. I stuck to a liquid diet but that then become incapable too keep down too. I miss my food, I was a massive ‘foodie’.

May 2015 we had to pay for a private consultation with a cardiologist due to an 8-10 month waiting list on the NHS. I was then directly admitted to Bristol heart institute mostly due to rapid deterioration, weight loss, high heart rate, palpitations and a general unwell feeling. This was when I was diagnosed with Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome. POTS is one of the syndromes under the dysautomnia umbrella. It’s an abnormality of the autonomic nervous system. The autonomic nervous system is in charge of all bodily functions that we don’t have to think about, such as: Heart rate and blood pressure regulation. Digestion and Bladder control. Other symptoms include;blurred and double vision. chest pain and palpations, tinnitus ,head pressure pains, blood pooling and poor circulation. –When a healthy person stands up, blood vessels contract and heart rate increases slightly to maintain blood supply to heart and brain. –What happens when I have PoTS and stand up?– In POTS, this automatic adjustment to upright posture is not working correctly, resulting in an excessive rise in heart rate, increased norepinephrine in the blood and altered blood flow to the brain causing a cocktail of symptoms.”POTS patients have reported to suffer from a degree of functional impairment similar to that seen in conditions such as COPD and congestive heart failure”-Mayo clinic.

I tried medication and found a combination of beta blockers and low dose steroids that helped, I then began to feel my feet and built myself up to walking with a frame- unfortunately it didn’t last long. August 2015 around my 17th birthday I pushed myself beyond my limits to maintain a better situation of health, but I heartbreakingly had zero control. I constantly fell to the floor due to paralysis coming back and I’d repeatedly faint when I stood up. From then on it has been a utter disaster…Due to the combination of gastric, cardiovascular, severe POTS and the deterioration of my ME symptoms I was left to rot. I became skin and bones due to lack of local knowledge, understanding and basic care. I was in a very bad way. Loosing the little hope I had left. I had no independence. No ‘life’. I just woke up everyday and survived. Getting myself through each and every torturous minute just to get to the next. I couldn’t sit, stand or walk at all. My mum and family had to do everything for me. I basically lived my life lying down flat in a darkened room being confined to my bed for months on end. I couldn’t see the light at the end of the tunnel; just total utter darkness.

No doctor would listen to me about how bad I was getting or realized how seriously unwell I actually was. Nobody would take me because I’m not a textbook case. I’m so complex 4 hospitals turned me down. If it weren’t for my wonderful GP for calling the ambulance that day, for taking me seriously and understanding the desperate and critical state I was in. I would’ve been dead. After my ECG at my local I was blue lighted to Bristol heart institute where my cardiologist freed a side room and sat there awaiting my arrival. It all happened so quickly. Safe to say that he was stunned at how sick I actually was. It was shocking and concerning having to hear the true reason why my heart and body is the way it is. If it weren’t for my cardiologist I wouldn’t have been here to tell my story today. During that 7 week admission I was diagnosed with Severe Gastroparesis. Gastroparesis means ‘stomach paralysis’. It is a condition which results in extreme weakness of the stomach muscles- food can not empty from the stomach to the small intestine normally. In severe cases, Gastroparesis can completely paralyse the stomach and can cause partial if not full paralysis from the oesophagus to the anus. The primary symptoms are nausea, vomiting and abdominal pain. Other symptoms of gastroparesis include bloating, abdominal distension, early satiety (feeling full quickly when eating) and weight loss and deficiencies due to malabsorption of nutrients.
My POTS and Gastroparesis was so bad that my heart shrunk and weakened because it was working so hard to cope with my crazy heart rate at 210bpm, I was severely internally dehydrated; my organs had to work 5 times as hard to do their jobs. I was extremely malnourished weighing 33kg; all the sodium, magnesium, potassium and many vitamins were stripped from my body-it was a miracle I was alive and or not brain dead (I already struggled with my speech and was unable to hold a conversation). I was “the living dead” my doctor stated. Within 10 minutes of arrival I had an NG feeding tube in and IV access within 5 days I was no longer in a critical situation.
Thanks to the Gastroparesis I couldn’t hold down the feed which doctors were giving me to “force my stomach to work” I clearly had to prove to them I wasn’t anorexic. So after vomiting up 3 NG’s I had an NJ tube placed (it goes through your nose, and bypasses the stomach and sits in the small bowel). For 3 weeks my body rejected both the feed and the tubes but finally on the 5 week I was stable and beginning to put on weight. Due to my cardiologist almost loosing his job and loosing the ability to admit POTS patients anymore because of lack of funding for conditions (apart from heart failure) that you can’t fix…I had to go else where. I was not well enough for home. So that’s when I was transferred to UCLH in the centre of London.I had been in UCLH for 11 months due to the severity of my conditions stemming from the vaccine injury. Im bed bound, paralysed from the waste down, my hands often paralyse too. I’m tube dependant- I have one tube for feeding and one for bile drainage to prevent vomiting and help with nausea. I have a paralysed gut and can’t swallow, I’ve have had two severe bouts of a rare type of IBD called Eosinophilic colitis, I’m on 24hours of IV fluids with glucose which goes through my Central line directly to my heart. I’ve had 8 NG tubes 7 NJ’s, 48 cannulas , 3 PICC lines, 11 endoscopic procedures, 3 attempts of an PEGJ insertion, 4 MRIs, 6 ultrasounds and 1 bone density scan in this hospital stay alone. During this admission I’ve had the 5 year anniversary of being “noticeably sick” in October 2016, and its 6 years since the second vaccine caused noticeable side affects in January 2017.

I thought I was done with near death experiences until I had my second one on the one occasion where I thought I was giving myself a better quality of life with a PEGJ tube insertion so I could take both tubes from my nose. Unfortunately it went catastrophically wrong. During the operation little did I know that I vomited into my lungs because of my stomachs inability to stop producing bile. Therefore my oxygen flatlined, my heart stopped and I had no choice but to be sedated, intubated and put on a ventilator to suction the vomit, to help me breathe, and help myself and my internal organs recover. The doctors and my family didn’t know how or if I’d wake up. I died and I came back to life. You read of all these stories of tragic things happening to others, but I never thought something like this would happen to myself. I want to let the world know.
*Did you have any idea what had caused it? When did you start to think it could be the HPV vaccine?*

-At first, myself and my family didn’t put two and two together. But I defiantly thought something wasn’t right. At the time we thought the vaccine was safe because they give it in schools and on the letter the parents were given to sign consent I remember reading “it saves lives” so who on earth would turn a new, supposedly effective form of treatment down? We trust our government and health care to keep us safe, but now, since getting sick from something the NHS gave me (and the lack of funding and time they put into chronic illnesses) I don’t trust any med professionals that I don’t know. Why? Because I’ve been treated in such a barbaric way. Its been hell on earth.

I was completely fine before the vaccinations, then it escalated quickly. I had a funny feeling it could’ve been linked because I left school after the first vaccine felling strange, I had the second and my entire family said I didn’t look like me and I wasn’t acting as I normally would *dancing around the house for hours and doing homework till 10pm* I woke up the following morning and felt like I was in a different body, I couldn’t think clearly. After the 3rd I was certain it must be related. Then when I got a phone and wifi, I knew for sure ever since I came across a post on social media at the end of 2012, ever since i saw it in our local newspaper and my grandparents sent it me and said “that’s you in words”, I was sure ever since I discussed it with my doctor and found medical links to research. I knew ever since I met two girls similar to me in the bed next to me in the hospital and then before I knew it, I know 1000’s through Instagram; I immediately saw the connection. Then when you research it, watch worldwide documentary’s, see everyone else suffering, see information and emails from the European Medical Authorities leak out via the web, then the next day they’ve been wiped off the face of the earth, you begin to understand that something is not right. I had high amounts of unwanted metal, high eoniesphillia, antigens, antibodies and chemical reactions/changes in my blood. Which were never there before in routine blood tests. So many people getting immediately sick couldn’t just be a coincidence.

*What were you doing before having the injections? What were your ambitions? What is your life like now?*
-Before I got sick I did many things girls age 12 should do. I hiked, mountain biked, went to the park, rollerbladed to the shops, had social gatherings, went to the cinema, birthday parties, I had friends.
I was a dancer. And I think that speaks for itself. I had an artistic, busy and athletic lifestyle. I danced 6 days a week; at Danceworks studios, at school and I also stretched and worked on technique religiously at home. I loved to goto after-school sport and dance clubs every night. I loved the fact that I had a regime and something to look forward to every day. I was on the right road to getting A’s at GCSE.I lived life to the max, life has always been important to me, more so now I’m isolated from the real world. I danced to feel free, in control and to have the time of my life. I used my body to create a piece of art. I made memories which I now use as a coping mechanism and a tool to guide me and help me deal with a life full of disappointment, hardship, illness and pain.

I wanted to have a dance career; my heart bleeds with the torture knowing I may never walk again, therefore ever dance again. I love art and fashion so I went into fashion design but my conditions took a downward spiral, I didn’t even get a quarter way through the course.

Everyday is a battle against the never ending symptoms-against pain, random and exhausting fits, mast cell reactions, the agony when meds, feed and water is pushed down my tube. Then there’s the war with the invisible aspects people don’t see: the nausea, migraines, vision problems, light and noise sensitivity, the multiple injection wounds from injecting daily to reduce blood clots. You don’t see the paralysed stomach or delayed motility of my GI tract, the raw inflammation and ulceration in my colon, the over active nerve endings, blocked signals in my brain and spinal cord, and of course the intense chronic pain that you don’t always see in public because of the ‘stay brave and cry later face’. It’s all hidden until you tell the world your story.
*Why do you think it is down to the jab? Has anyone ever said this to you (doctors, experts)?*
-I don’t think that getting sick after a vaccine that is now pumping around our bodies is ‘just a coincidence’ as those who don’t want to believe it say…
The facts I’m 100% certain on, with my own research as well as doctors words is that the vaccine has channeled an autoimmune response which has made my own cells attack against my own body, with chemical changes happening in the endocrine systems and metal poisoning in my bloodstream. On a government level The WHO (world health organisation) has officially documented a signal for POTS and Gastroparesis (and other motility disorders) for being a typical adverse reaction to the vaccine in the ‘collaborating centre for international drug safety’.

My doctor wrote, signed and filled an official report which states that I’m vaccine injured and it should be recognized. It’s now in my notes as causation NOT correlation.

The problem is, is no matter if the vaccine damaged me or not, doctors often focus on the individual symptoms and are reluctant to find, treat or reverse the root cause / trigger which angers me. As I believe it’s crucial to identify the cause so that more awareness, acknowledgment and treatment can be sourced. Equally, no matter how many doctors say “you’re vaccine injured” they’re reluctant to put it in writing due to the fear of them loosing their jobs or license to practice. It’s one big cover up which time will only reveal.

*What impact has this had on you? How do you feel about the future?*
-Now my life is complicated, and that’s not because I’m in a complex relationship like others my age. But because my future is uncertain. Tomorrow is another day but I never know what tomorrow or even the next hour will bring; I can’t predict the future and I can’t plan ahead. I don’t know if I’ll be able to have kids as I know many 18 year olds who are infertile thanks to Cervarix or Gardasil.
I may have a broken body which persistently disobeys me, however I am lucky enough to be a mentally strong individual who’s managed to build up her own coping mechanisms and psychological techniques despite negligence and terrible past experiences. Despite hardship I find happiness. Despite pain I find inner peace. Mindfulness may help others in my situation, and yes it will keep the demons of depression and anxious thoughts away. However, no amount of mindfulness and positivity will change the immense pain I endure and magic the mobility and loss of sensation back into my once healthy, sporty, dancing body of mine.
I believe conventional medicine is the only way forward to enable those injured and unwell to live, not just survive within the near future.

I guarantee my future won’t be how I planned it, but it will be full of determination and dedication to continue raising much needed awareness. *Why do you want to raise awareness about the jab? What would you say to other girls/parents thinking of getting the jab?*

-To all mums, dads and daughters out there who are considering getting the vaccine.
Don’t presume, do research and educate before you sign on the dotted line. The vaccine only lasts 3-5years and doesn’t protect you against all the strains of cervical cancer. Some teens and now adults have been diagnosed with cervical cancer despite the vaccine. The Dutch and Danish authorities, Spain, Japan and other countries are aware of the damage so its no longer a part of the ‘child vaccination program’, therefore no longer given in schools. Gov.uk provide a £120,000 payout under the “vaccine injury and damage” act. I’m eligible, however I will not be able to have or seek benefits for the rest of my life nor have prescriptions paid for. That amount of money wouldn’t even cover me for 10 months, let alone a lifetime! Do you think the government would have that option if it weren’t real!?

Unfortunately it’s not rare, but I’m not here to scare…

However, Some statistics are so shocking and eye-opening (which I will explain more in my next status).

I’m not “anti-vax” or a “scaremongerer” I just care about others. This is real. This is the pure ugly truth. I want to make people aware so they can make a decision for themselves.